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applesandbannas747 · 11 months

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same anon as before but thank u for the interesting response! and i’m sorry in advance for this long venting lol, but honestly i’m just really frustrated because i think fence could be as popular and mainstream as projects like check please or heartstopper if 1) there was good marketing for it, 2) if the releasing of the issues wasn’t so puzzling, and 3) if the storyline was progressing in a natural way.

rise makes no sense in context of the novels at all and im just? if they were going to have tie-in novels they should have been used to progress character and relationship development, not create an alternate world that’s never going to be addressed. even putting aside gross mischaracterization the novels literally cannot be canon so they’re just published for? no good reason i can see? they could have prequels (seiji and jesse or harvard and aiden pre-series) or been about the team bonding/getting better at fencing, or focused on side characters that won’t get as much focus in the comics (eugene! if he’s mostly being side-lined in the comics the novels could have been his time to shine instead of him being even more sidelined. or even bobby and dante or kally and tanner). there’s definitely a lot of characters in the comics and if it was getting overwhelming the novels could have picked up that slack but they didn’t so their purpose mystifies me — there was also clearly no reason to have nicholas and seiji as pov characters in those books because srb (and i do adore all srb’s other work so this is hard for me to say) was terrible at writing them. when she was good she was good (which makes me think if there had been more editing the novels could have been better) but when she was bad she was very very bad. since she was even worse at writing eugene i guess i should be glad eugene didn’t have a pov. but seriously if the novels were mainly just haiden it could have just been haiden pov.

idk i just used to love fence so much and always noticed there was never a huge following for it, which is okay because the small fence fandom is great!! but i’ve always thought it could have had a bigger audience. there is so much promise in the first issues of fence — kings row competing against exton, the revelation of the truth about nicholas, the reactions and results from that, character development for all the main characters, relationship development for nichoji & haiden, the team actually Becoming a team & the idea of seiji nicholas and eugene being the fencing team after aiden and harvard graduate. but i feel like we’re never going to see any of that. page time is spent on things that aren’t as important instead, and then it takes ages for the next issue/volume and like you said it doesn’t feel coherent or connected to the other issues anymore. it confuses me that all the edges in fence r being sanded down and that the interesting promises in it are constantly being put off.

i’m sorry for talking about this sm i have not been successful in getting anyone into fence irl 😭 i hadn’t read rise or the novels until this month and i reread vol 1-4 before i read the new stuff and it made me very nostalgic

Hi again! lmfao dude no need to ever apologize to me for vents about Fence because I am forever pontificating about it. I agree that Fence has (or, rather, had) the potential to be really popular to a wide audience and I think you hit the nail on the head. And so much of it is just such easy fixes--like putting any effort into marketing lol or when releasing the compiled issues as volumes, giving them all distinct covers and names would have been SO helpful. Reusing the issue covers for the volumes was a mistake (and again, that's something marketing should have been all over!!). and the storyline. oh man. yeah. that ship has sailed and I've had mental breakdowns about it--but if we'd stayed true to the original concept of Fence and BOOM and Pacat put more effort into reaching a wider audience, it could have been big. Another consideration here, of course, is the content-to-hiatus ratio, which loses a ton of fans, but I maintain that if BOOM had their shit together, they could have fixed that problem too! and it's so frustrating

GOD RIGHT??? The novels came in, ruined Fence, and then aren't even actually canon because they don't actually fit in the universe??? My theory is that since Pacat is a SRB superfan, he kind of let her go overboard and realized after the novels were published and he had to move his story forward post-Disarmed that he'd fucked up giving so much freedom to her. Because they called it canon--and he still says it's '80% canon' but it couldn't have happened. So the point of the novels was basically for Pacat to read fanfiction from his favorite author of his OCs--it did nothing positive for the story, the characters, the franchise, or the fans. and LITERALLY!!! I've always thought doing a prequel for the tie-ins made more sense. Like following the fencing team with Harvard, Aiden, Kally, and Tanner would have been so fun, or focusing on Kally and Tanner or Bobby and Dante would have been fun and would have left room for actual plot progression!! It was pure selfishness on the authors' part to do the novels how they did them. And if Pacat would father fangirl over SRB than write a meaningful story, that's his right, but it still bugs me that there was clearly no thought given to the consequences of the novels. So instead of dealing with them, we ignore them and pretend that they're still '80% canon' to make ourselves feel better for our oopsie. hahaaa I have nothing nice to say about SRB or her writing. I don't think she got anything right in Fence--except for hinting Eugesse, which you know she only did because she knew it was popular in the fandom and she wanted the hype and baited us with it lmfao But! I've always had issues with her even before she touched Fence--her blatant sexism in In Other Lands was disturbing to me when I read it (shaming and looking down on feminine traits isn't Woke or Revolutionary just because you assigned those traits to men in your "badass feminist society" and had all the women be grossly sexist and predatory) so it's not just me being an asshole because she ruined my favorite thing in the world <3 But I know she's very beloved among her fans and I'm sorry that she failed you in Fence when you love her other works so much. If there was one mercy from the novels, it was the lack of a Eugene POV even if it further proves he's not really part of the team/a main character...unfortunately that's a fair trade jkdfah

I always thought Fence deserved a bigger following than it ever got--and maybe having a bigger fanbase and more money being thrown at it would have helped BOOM commit to buying enough ahead to let Pacat and Jo actually work on it consistently and put out content more regularly. It really was setting itself up to be so fun and full of tropes the gays LOVE. i mean, sports 'manga' that's actually queer? All the fun tropes with rivals and 'becoming a team'? The classic character archetypes used smartly and effectively? I genuinely think it would have appealed to all the people who love Check Please and Heartstopper and Yuri on Ice. And it still does, I guess, but I feel like if Fence gets popular now, I'd be a bit sad to see all that love centered around a version of Fence I don't like (but that is pure selfishness lmfao I fully admit it). I just so love/d all the edges and conflicts in Fence and it's sad to see them sanded down in canon and resolved of screen.

LMFAO my dude I am sorry for rambling so much at you twice in a row now! Anyway, I'm always here to talk Fence uwu even though i can be harsh and unpleasant about things i don't like jskdfha

#jackshit #fence comic #thanks for the ask!!💜#fence vent

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henry-fox-mountchristen-windsor · 5 years

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so you read Red White and Royal Blue and want to know what to read next:

I am a big reader. So when I read rwrb and fell in love I was struggling with reading anything else afterward because of how i fucking love every single moment of that book. I'm assuming y’all have the same feelings or are interested in getting into more books (or both!) so (tldr) here are some books!

So you have fallen in love with royalty:

The Captive Prince series by cs pacat! Um fair warning it seems like total pwp, but I promise it is so much more! It’s a really great queer political drama.

The Royal We by Heather Cox and Jessica Morgan! This is another royal rom-com with a relationship that is based on Kate Middleton and William. Casey read it and it inspired rwrb.

Her Royal Highness. A YA novel set at a Scottish boarding school. Another great queer love story with some quality modern royalty.

Some other bi-disasters:

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell. Another YA book. Kinda like if drarry was canon but also totally different. I’d also recommending reading fangirl, very different book but one of my favorites!

The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzie Lee. Don’t let the summary of this book fool you. This is one of my all-time favorites. Ahhh so complex, just so good. Also, there is a sequel starring felicity who is the main character's sister!

Other great LGBTQ books:

Check, Please! By Ngozi. A webcomic so it’s free online too. I am obsessed and the fandom is pretty lively. Also hockey. H O C K E Y

Heartstopper by Alice Osmond. Once again another webcomic so free online. It’s so cute BUT also goes pretty deep into some topics, also has a coming out story too.

Bloom by Kevin Panetta. This book gave me so many emotions. Also, it’s a graphic novel

I wish you all the best by Mason Deaver. Casey and Mason are friends which is super cool too. This book focuses on a non-binary teen and their coming out story. It was so emotional and pretty draining but such an amazing read.

Tell Me How You Really Feel by Aminah Mae Safi. The most recent book I read, it’s a story about culture, film, and it’s good and gay.

There Goes Sunday School by Alexander C. Eberhart. I read this a year ago but I had a really hard time getting over it. Man, it was so good and it really deserves more love.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. This book is a total classic and a must-read in YA. SUPER WELL WRITTEN.

Politics:

Not going to Lie, I haven’t read that many political books. But I can recommend a couple of tv shows!

The West Wing. This is one of my favorites if not my legit favorite tv show. It is so good and it just makes you fall in love with the White House. Also, June’s name was inspired by CJ Cregg who is the press secretary.

Parks and Rec. You maybe like what the heck is this doing here but man this show is legit.

Books from others!

We contain multitudes by Sarah Henstra

All books by Becky Albertali (I’ve read love Simon but no others)

A few other people gave me some book recs and I can’t find them :( so sorry y’all. Feel free to add on anything that you feel like i missed. I’ll will def be adding stuff on as I remember more.

#rwrb #RED WHITE AND ROYAL BLUE #alex claremont-diaz #Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor #Prince Henry #FirstPrince #alex and henry #alex/henry #Casey McQuiston #history huh #history huh?#rwrb book recs #lgbtq books #gay books #books #book recs

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